“The Shepherd taught it to me on the way up to the High Places, and I wrote it down after I got up there.”

“Why is it called a song for attic dwellers?” asked Compassionate.

“Where else could it possibly be sung with greater meaning and effect?” asked her cousin with a laugh. “It has all the force and beauty of contrast, and all the glory of promise and fulfillment.”

“Sing it again,” begged Compassionate. “Sing it over and over again until I have learned it by heart.”

So Grace and Glory taught her cousin The Attic Song just as Sorrow had taught her the song about the Hinds’ Feet when she was limping on the mist-shrouded mountains.

And as they sang, the dreadful little attic really did seem to undergo a transformation before their very eyes. It seemed to sparkle with glittering jewels as though it were a room in a palace, and the bare, ugly walls appeared to have melted away, leaving only a vista of royal gardens and orchards.

After they had sung it over and over again until Compassionate knew it by heart, Grace and Glory set about preparing a little midday meal for them both, and as she did so the two talked together about many things. Grace and Glory promised that she would visit her cousin every day, and Compassionate accepted the offer with overflowing joy and gratitude. As it turned out there was a special reason for this.

“Grace and Glory,” she said, speaking slowly and rather hesitatingly, but with great earnestness, “If you are willing, I would like you to help me with something.”

“With all my heart,” answered Grace and Glory gladly, “in any way that I can. There is nothing that I should like more.”

“Then,” went on Compassionate, with a little flush on her cheeks, “I will tell you what I have been thinking and hoping. You know that my husband is coming out of prison in a few days’ time and I am waiting to receive him. For poor and miserable as this attic is, and terribly close to temptation as, alas, it also is, it is the only refuge which he has in all the world. I shall be here to do all that I can for him,” and as she spoke her face flushed with tender love and she seemed to have forgotten completely how weak she was and how utterly unfit to do anything. “But,” she went on, looking at her cousin entreatingly, “but, dear Grace and Glory, my brother Craven Fear is to leave prison on the same day as my husband, and he has nowhere to go. I have no room for him in this tiny attic, neither would Mrs. Murmuring allow him to come here. They will take my poor husband back to be their drudge but not Craven.